


It Only Makes It Worse to Live Without It

by Cerusee



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne really loves his family, Bruce has a funny sense of fun, Gen, Happy Birthday BrooseMan BatWayne, Look ma no angst!, jason and dick build a fire, poor Tim, these kids are all trolls, tuesday at the beach with the batfam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 17:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17854457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Who thinks a fun birthday is spending the day freezing their ass off at the beach in the middle ofFebruary?Bruce Wayne, that's who.





	It Only Makes It Worse to Live Without It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).



> I actually broke my writing dry spell with this puppy a month ago, but I wanted to save it for Bruce's birthday.

The day was chill and grey. The sun had risen hours ago, but even this late in the morning, Bruce could barely feel the pale rays on his face. They held no heat.

Bruce stared at the beach, at the long expanse of pale sand, edging onto the horizon. He let himself lose his focus, for a moment, drifting along on the rhythmic lapping of cold water on cold sand, here, at the edge of water and earth.

Here, at the seashore.

Bruce sighed, deeply.

“Thank you, boys,” Bruce said. “It’s perfect.”

Dick kicked Jason in the shin and muttered, “Told you he’d like it.”

Jason drove his elbow into Dick’s ribs so viciously that Dick choked. “The only reason I’m _not_ holding this against you is that I know it wasn’t actually your idea.”

“If he likes it, it’s my idea,” Dick said, _sotto voce._

***

“Hey,” Steph said, brightly. “Let’s build some sand castles.”

“Oh my god,” Tim said, with one frantic glance up at them, before he started frantically saving files on his laptop.

Cass’s eyes sparked, and she dug a bare foot into the frigid sand, kicking up a spray of the cold sand, which spattered all over Cass and Steph and Tim and the screen of the laptop together.

Steph stretched her arms out. Tim wiped off the screen of the laptop before he slammed it shut and wrapped it in a towel. 

Cass grinned.

***

Bruce dipped his arm into the edge of the lapping tide, feeling the water-borne grit of the sea swirl up around it. He slid his hand into the sand proper, finger by finger: forefinger, first, then middle finger, then ring finger, then pinky. Bruce pushed his thumb into the bed of the sand so deep that he almost lost his balance, as the sand bed sucked him down. He pulled his hand back, relishing the sharp scratch of grainy sand on his skin, the slap of cold water on his wrist.

It was peaceful. Hypnotic, even. 

The water dipped in and out, in and out.

Nothing was trying to kill him.

Bruce heard a squelching sound behind him. He turned his head.

Jason was knee-deep in the surf, moving slowly, as he wrenched each foot out of the watery sand.

“Jason?” he said.

“Bruce,” Jason said, casually brushing his shoulder against Bruce’s, as he came up next to him. “ _Jesus_ , this water is cold.”

“It is,” Bruce agreed.

“Can’t stay here long. We’ll freeze our legs off, boss.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Hey,” Jason said, pointing at the water. “Look at that. Is that an octopus?”

Bruce leaned perilously close to the water, half-sure he was about to be dunked, but Jason didn’t move. Bruce caught a fraction of a glimpse of a reflection from the lapping water; Jason was looking out over the sea. “It’s just seaweed, Jay.”

“Huh,” Jason said, not looking down. “I could have sworn. Guess I could have used more marine biology lessons when I was a kid.”

Bruce straightened, his hands wet and annoyingly cold. “Jason, I never said you couldn’t have an aquarium. I just said it would be a lot of work and that I didn’t want you to be even more distracted from your schoolwork.”

“ _Huh_ ,” Jason said, again, and splashed Bruce with both hands, before trudging out of the ocean, leaving Bruce to raise one salt-soaked hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

***

Tim had _tried_ to convince Steph not to take her shoes off and go wading in the tide (“It’s the middle of winter!”) but she’d thrown a tennis shoe at his chest and done it anyway. Cass had followed Steph. There had been a lot of loud, excited shrieking. About three minutes later, they’d both run back from of the lapping tide, shivering and laughing with blue toes, sea-salt-specked corduroys rolled up their shins, and as Steph dashed past him, Cass still following, Cass had paused just long enough make eye contact with Tim, grinning from ear to ear, and dump a whole seashell’s worth of slimy kelp on his head.

***

“These are Stephanie’s shoes,” Father said. He sounded slightly concerned.

Damian reached out and took one of the plastic monstrosities he’d seen her wear. It was strangely spongy to the touch. Damp as well, but this _was_ a beach. “Only one of them is wet, Father. Should we be concerned?”

Cass hurtled past them, laughing, and Stephanie followed her, panting, a sand bucket wedged under her arm.

“Not at the moment,” Father said, dryly.

***

Jason shivered violently, and rubbed his arms all over his torso before he tipped the last of the small swirls of paper he’d made against the pyramid. “Okay, _do it_ ,” he said.

Dick struck a match, and guided it under the paper nest.

The wind swirled, and the match went out.

“ _Shit!_ ” Jason said. “Do it again.”

Dick struck another match, and guided it underneath the construction again. This time, one of the twisted legs of paper that Jason had made briefly caught alight, before it went out, smoking for a few brief moments.

Jason and Dick both stared. “Jason,” Dick said, “what were we using as kindling, again?”

“Junked-up pages of Steph’s February issue of Cosmopolitan,” Jason said, through chattering teeth. “Got it from her coat pocket.”

“Damn it,” Dick said. “Okay, I’m going to try this one more time. After that, I’m calling Kori.”

Dick struck another match, guiding it carefully against the nest of kindling. This time, the fire took, slowly spreading from kindling leg to kindling leg, and then finally to the nest of logs they’d built around the paper scraps. 

Jason went tense the moment the flame properly caught, and kept, and built, and sputtered, and smoked. They both choked on it before springing back.

The horrible realization hit Dick: _oh_ crap, _smoke_ — 

But as the flames clawed their way up the logs, increasingly bold, and the smoke started to thin, Dick saw Jason‘s frame slowly relax. Jason looked over at Dick, grinning. 

“Hey, look, Dick,” Jason said. “We made _fire_.”

Dick felt himself grinning right back. “We made fire.”

***

“I’m going to _kill_ Damian,” Tim said.

“You’re going to be fine, Tim,” Steph said, methodically scooping sand and tossing it neatly to the side. “You’re above high tide.”

“That little asshole,” Tim snarled. “I can’t even take a _nap_.”

“Shh!” Cass said. “Don’t bother _him_.”

All eyes flicked over to where Bruce was stretched out on the beach lounger Alfred had packed for the trip. He seemed to be asleep, and yet…

“Drake,” a light, mocking voice drifted down the beach. “In over your head again?”

Tim was almost halfway unburied, by now, head and neck and torso mostly free. He didn’t wait for the rest of him to get unburied, before he threw a huge handful of cold, wet sand at Damian’s face.

Damian snarled, stooped, and threw one back. Tim howled, threw more sand at Damian, hysterically scrabbling his way out of the sand he was mired in. Damian screeched and charged him. Sand flew everywhere.

Steph stared, appalled. “Should we tell Tim that it was us that buried him?” she muttered to Cass.

“Um,” Cass said. “Later?”

***

Bruce cracked an eye open. The sky, which had never brightened above a pale, bluish-grey haze in the morning, had darkened into slow shades of faint purple-grey, and then a proper greyish-grey. 

And finally, it had darkened to black.

Bruce could see just a smattering of pale white stars. Even on the shore, the light pollution in New Jersey was pervasive. The bonfire somewhere off to his left wasn’t helping.

He didn’t mind. He’d never exactly been in the habit of stargazing as a child. And he’d seen more stars up close than any ordinary human being could imagine seeing, from stranger vantages—close as suns—when he somehow, in his long journeyings, found himself traveling among them.

_None of the stars I’ve seen are as extraordinary as you_ , Bruce thought, turning his head slightly to catch the sight of the bonfire properly. He shut his eyes again, and let the firelight dance across the closed lids.

Bruce only realized he’d fallen asleep again when he felt a gentle prod on his shoulder.

“Aren’t you cold?” a voice asked, near his head.

Bruce opened his eyes again to see Dick, half-kneeling next to the lounger, and smiling fondly at him. 

Bruce flexed his fingers, felt they were in his pockets, and remembered that he was wearing a heavy winter coat, not the cowl, not a suit and tie. The coat was wool, and almost as good as a blanket.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Bruce would deny it until the day he died in truth, but he dozed off again, and didn’t move until Dick nudged him a second time.

“Five more minutes,” Bruce said, and he definitely wasn’t whining.

There was a _crunch_ , and Bruce could feel a heavy footfall, before the owner of those feet came close and sat down next to him. “They’re still going insane,” Jason reported. “All four of them.” He smelled like sea-salt and smoke. Bruce ignored the smoke part.

Bruce could hear shrieks drifting up from the water’s edge— _happy shrieks, they’re fine_. He didn’t need to get up and intervene.

They three sat in gentle silence, listening to the coming tide, to the yells and to the laughter.

Bruce’s phone, which had been in Dick’s pocket, buzzed loudly. Dick looked at it, and then handed it over to Bruce.

_Has it been a good birthday?_

Bruce’s fingers danced for a mere second over the phone’s keypad, before he handed the phone back to Dick. He looked over the starlit shoreline, and listened to the voices of his children bounce along the water.

_The best, old friend. The very best._


End file.
